Stephen Henderson: In Detroit, this first day of school will be like no other

September 2, 2012

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Give schools the tools they need -- and the obligation to hold themselves accountable.

And meet students where they learn instead of lumping them into grade levels.

What would public education in Detroit look like if shaped according to those few simple principles? If we stopped the endless, raging arguments over power, control and money and just began building a new and different system, from the students up?

I'd call that a pretty good start on desperately needed change. And I think we're about to see it happen as schools open Tuesday. Not in every school. Not yet for every kid. And, of course, because this is Detroit and we've been wallowing in the depths of educational dysfunction for so long, things could get tripped up in any number of ways.

But I see some promise in the Education Achievement Authority, a new district made up of 15 of the city's lowest-performing schools, which is taking a surprising and innovative approach.

And a set of nine other schools will relaunch this year as independent academies, with high-powered governing councils managing schools that will be held responsible for graduating 95% of their students, sending 75% to college and increasing ACT scores.

If I'm right, and these schools can establish a new paradigm for public education in Detroit, they just might mark the way forward for a district that has been adrift and dying for nearly four decades.

Merit-based selection

I admit to being skeptical at first of the EAA, and especially wary of John Covington, the person hired to lead it. He left his job as school superintendent in Kansas City, Mo., in the middle of an extensive turnaround effort there to come to Michigan. Covington has never really explained why that should give us confidence that he'll stick around to help us through an even tougher job here.

And I was worried that the turnaround plan would be limited in its ambition and scope -- same schools, same teachers. What would be the real difference?

But Covington is set to open next week with an innovative model and a corps of well-vetted, competitively chosen principals.

Harvard University helped design a screening process for the district's leaders, who had to prove how they could increase graduation rates and test scores. People from all over the country applied, including some of the best principals from DPS. And the principals were given the chance to select their teachers.

Imagine that: the introduction of merit-based selection of leadership and staff. We've needed it for decades in public education in Detroit.

The EAA will also do away with the traditional grade-level structure and instruct students according to their skill level. If you're two grade levels behind, that's where the teachers will meet you with their lesson plans, and the goal each year is nothing more than a full year's progress. Nine months of growth for nine months in class.

Standards and accountability

Districts around the country have tried this -- taking chronic low-performing schools and retooling them from top to bottom, outside the regular structure. In Michigan, we've never even attempted it until now. Detroit, which has always resisted change, will be ground zero for it, beginning Tuesday.

Apart from the EAA, nine other Detroit schools will be cut loose from answering to the DPS administration, run instead by governing councils that will decide on their leadership, curriculum and structure.

So far, the councils have attracted some high-powered names whose expertise and accomplishments can't help but strengthen city schools. (For example, Dr. Reginald Eadie, president of Sinai Grace Hospital, is on the board for the Benjamin Carson High School of Science and Medicine; Jeff Bergeron, president and CEO of Ernst & Young, is on the board for the three small schools that now make up Cody High.) They sit alongside community members and parents from the schools.

The idea is to introduce stable governance. DPS has changed superintendents like most people change the oil in their car (both under state supervision and local control) but the members of these councils should provide consistency, one of the key ingredients to educational progress.

Most important, these schools will import the high-standards of accountability that are found in the most effective independent and charter schools. If they don't graduate 90% of their students and get 90% on to college, the school staffs and the governing councils will be replaced.

Is any of this guaranteed to work? Of course not. Public education is still rife with troubles in Detroit, and the city's children present challenges that will never be easy to overcome.

But it's an important start, and one that deserves support from everyone -- teachers, parents, the unions and the state -- to be sure that it grows into a future for one of the nation's most troubled school districts.

Stephen Henderson is editorial page editor for the Free Press and the host of "American Black Journal," which airs at 1 p.m. Sundays on Detroit Public Television. Follow him on Twitter@ShendersonFreep. Contact Henderson at shenderson600@freepress.com, or at 313-222-6659.